Mary Bauermeister – one and one is three

She is seen as the mother of the Fluxus movement and was Stockhausen’s muse.
In an attic of Cologne’s Lintgasse, she wrote art history in the early 1960s with such personalities as John Cage, Hans G Helms, and Nam June Paik. Today, at 85 years of age, Mary Bauermeister still isn’t thinking about quitting.

As long as her strength allows, she works in her studio near Cologne, the scene of the first feature-length documentary film about Mary Bauermeister and her radically personal biography.

The film tells the story of an exceptional artist, a visionary, a lover. Mary Bauermeister has lived her life self-determined and yet full of doubt. It is not difficult for her to talk about success and defeat in the same breath. Over a year, the artist offers insights into her life and work: observations at her home, an exclusive exhibition in New York, and – back in Germany – a destructive fire in her studio, a trip to the Atlantic as well as presentations of her works in Cologne and Berlin. These are the ingredients for an intimate film portrait that shows the highlights and downturns in her eventful life. This picture is complemented by memories of experiences that still shape her art and life today. The rich and in part unpublished personal film archive intensively documents her early career in the 1960s and illuminates the conflict between artistic success in New York and the family life she shared with the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne.

Mary Bauermeister’s unbridled energy is infectious. She only calms down when she sits at the large wooden table in the household kitchen and talks about her life. While outside in the garden the seasons pass by, she captivates us with stories and thoughts, allowing us to participate and find ourselves again, inspiring and encouraging us to look beyond the horizon, sharpening our senses for the fact that the sum is more than its parts.

“Mary Bauermeister – one and one is three” is a film about society, about the finiteness of life and the beauty of the world.